Ah, today the weather is so nice. It makes my little inner hippie heart want to throw on a yellow dress and dance in the daffodils. But alas, I was stuck inside writing a paper. : P Anyways, a couple of weeks ago I held my first raw food potluck. Lovely people and lovely food. I promised to put up some pictures of the delicious food, along with some recipes. First, I made lasagna, which I’ve already posted the recipe for. This time though, I did the cheese a little bit different, so here it is:

FOR ZUCCHINI STRIPS
2 long and thick zucchini , peeled, and sliced into thin, wide strips with a peeler or mandoline
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 dash celtic salt
FOR THE MUSHROOMS
any olive oil left from the zucchini mix, and more if needed
nama shoyu
1 cup portabella mushroom caps, sliced into thin, wide and long slices
OTHER INGREDIENTS
2 big tomato, sliced into thin, wide slices
1 cup spinach, coated very lightly in any of the extra marinade from the mushrooms and chopped

Preparation:

1. To make the cashew cheez:
-Process the soaked cashews, lemon juice, lemon zest, nutritional yeast, celtic sea salt, onion, and herbs. The measurements are just approximate, so taste as you go, it should taste yummy like ravioli cheese. It should have a ricotta-cheesey texture, so add more lemon juice or water if needed.
2. To make the zucchini layers, coat the thin and wide zucchini strips with the olive oil and salt so they are coated but NOT dripping. Set aside, and reserve any extra olive oil and salt mix you have left for the mushrooms.
3. To make the mushrooms, coat the thinly sliced portabella caps in the EVOO and nama shoyu mixture, again so they are coated but NOT dripping.
4. Coat the baby spinach VERY lightly in any of the leftover marinade from the mushrooms.
5.TIME TO ASSEMBLE!! Arrange the layers like so: zucchini (slightly overlapping), cheez, tomato slices, mushrooms, spinach, and repeat. do this so its as tall as you like, and coat the top layer of zucchini with some more cheez and tomato.
6. Dehydrate at 130 degrees for an hour (this will not destroy enzymes because of the moisture content of the food at this stage), and then at 110-115 for another half hour to an hoour or so.
7. ENJOY!!!!

Soak Flax seeds in a pint glass filed with water for 30 minutes before using.

While they’re soaking, process the Onions (quartered) in your Food Processor (FP) with the finest (smallest) slicing blade. (not the chopping/normal ‘S’ blade). Should make long thin strips/slices of onions. (Julienne) Set aside in very, very large bowl.

Change your FP blade to the finest grating blade you have and process the Carrots. Add to the bowl with the sliced Onions.

If soak time has passed. Put soaked Flax Seeds and the soak Water into your Blender. Refill the pint glass with water and add that water to blender also. Blend for just a bit, it will become a thick gel/cream with a few whole flax seeds and bits of all sizes.

Pour Flax cream blend into bowl with Onions and Carrots. Add the Olive Oil and the Salt. Stir very well with large spoon. Allow to sit for 5 to 10 minutes. While waiting cover 3 Excalibur dehydrator trays with cling film or use teflex sheets.

Divide your mixture evenly between the 3 trays and spread out evenly on each one, just less than a half inch thick. Place into Dehydrator and run until dried well on top. Flip onto normal uncovered trays and continue to dehydrate until almost crispy. It’s best to cut it about two hours after you flip it before it gets too crispy.

As an option, try stopping one tray before it dries all the way and leave those squares more flexible.

These cookies are just…yuuum. Decadent? Yes. Rich? Yes. A little on the heavy side? Yes. Overindulgent? Yes. Time consuming? Yes. Worth it? Yes! So I looked over a couple of different raw “samoa” recipes and kind of combined them. Here’s what happened:

For the cookie:

1 cup of almonds or cashews ground into a meal ( I used a coffee grinder, if you use cashews the cookie will turn out much softer, but will still be delicious)

1 cup of raisins or date, soaked

1 cup of shredded coconut, ground into a meal (I used a coffee grinder)

So you’ll want to start with the cookie first, because it takes the longest.

The Cookie Directions:

Combine almond meal and coconut in a food processor. Add maple syrup, dates, vanilla and sea salt, and process until it forms a ball of dough.

Flatten the dough into a sheet and cut out cookie-sized circles. To maintain authenticity, you can also cut a smaller circle out of the middle to make its familiar donut-like shape (donuts? Yum! I have such a sweet-tooth. Now, I’m getting off topic). OR you can take small pieces of doll, roll into a “snake” and the join the two ends together to form a circle. Flatten gently.

“Bake” the cookies in the dehydrator, flipping once, until crisp (I left mine in there for almost 24 hours).

The “Raw Condensed Milk” Directions:

Soak the flaxseed in the water overnight.

Blend at high speed in the blender until the mixture is ‘fluffy’ and frothy. Very, very slowly add the agave nectar. Add the sea salt, coconut, and vanilla and continue to blend until mixture is very smooth and creamy looking.

Pour mixture into a shallow dish and place in the dehydrator.

Dehydrate at 115 degrees for at least three hours, or until desired consistency is reached.

Use in recipes or continue to dehydrate to make ‘dulce de leche’

The Topping, Part II Directions:

Stir the dried coconut into the “raw condensed milk”.

Chocolate Directions:

Stir together coconut oil, cacao, and agave until smooth and melted.

Putting it all together Directions(Time for all these scrumptious desserts to get to know each other):

First, take the cookie and dip the bottom into the Chocolate dip. Set cookies, bottom side up into the freezer for a few minutes. The chocolate should become solid quickly.

Remove the cookies from the freezer and top each cookie generously with the coconut topping.

Drizzle remaining chocolate dip over coconut topping.

Place in freezer or fridge. Keep in until ready to serve. Yum!

Some other delicious dishes we had at the raw food potluck:

Raw Wraps with a “chicken” salad and veggies. So good!

A lovely and refreshing Cucumber and Radish Dip

There were deliciiiiiious Popsicles and “fudgesicles”, but I guess we were all in such a hurry to eat them I didn’t get a picture!

I still have a lot more recipes to share.

My sister is on her 7th day of following a 100% raw diet. She said so far, it hasn’t been as hard as she thought at all. We talked a little bit about “detoxing” which can be anything from a headache, to stomach ache. Maybe I’ll touch on that in a post some time. This usually only last about a week at the most. She hasn’t had any real symptoms so far. : D

It seems like we skipped spring and went straight to summer. Today was in the high 80s, but that’s how Georgia does it eh? I’m not complaining, I absolutely loooooove the warm weather. Nothing stopping me from being outside. Easter was lovely spent at Callaway Gardens. I need to go back when their organic veggie garden is open for business!

Strawberries are in season and cheeeeap! Right now I’m sipping on a strawberry smoothie and it would be morally wrong not to share. It’s pretty simple :

1 cup water

1 overflowing cup frozen strawberries

1 tablespoon chia seeds (optional)

1 tablespoon agave or honey OR 1/2 teaspoon stevia

A splash of natural vanilla extract

Blend everything together and BAM: springtime in your mouth. You could of course use raw nut milk for a creamier, richer, more decadent shake.

Party in Your Mouth Green Smoothie

Lunch was simple cabbage and carrots. Kind of like a cole-slaw. As simple as it sounds I’ve been loooovin it lately. I love tart so throwing some Apple Cider Vinegar on it makes it just right for me.

Dinner? This wonderful raw lasagna recipe I found on http://goneraw.com/node/4974 by elizabethh. I’ll write out the recipe since I messed with it a bit. I have a beautiful picture I took of it, but can’t get it on here right now.

Raw “Lasagna”:

1 1/2 cups cashews, soaked at least 1 hour

1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice

3 teaspoons nutritional yeast

1/2 teaspoon celtic sea salt

1/2 teaspoon fresh black pepper

1 teaspoon fresh finely chopped basil

1/2 teaspoon of fresh minced garlic

1 long and thick zucchini , peeled, and sliced into thin, wide strips with a peeler or mandoline

Whirl the cashews, lemon juice, yeast, salt, pepper, basil, and garlic all together in a blender or food processor. You won’t it to be pretty smooth, but it’s ok if it has some cashew chunks to give it more of a ricotta texture.

Rub the olive oil into the zucchini slices. Set aside.

Rub the leftover olive oil into the mushrooms and spinach. You can add additional sea salt if you like.

Dehydrate at 130 for an hour. Don’t leave it at 130 longer for an hour as this would cause the food to actually reach that temperature and defeat the entire purpose of eating it raw in order to keep the enzymes. After an hour at 130 reduce to 110 for 30-1 hour.

If I didn’t have a dehydrator I would definitely consider making this by wrapping Aluminum foil on top and setting it outside. Sounds crazy but I think it’s hot enough. : D

I’m going to make this for my raw potluck, as well as some other goodies like raw samoas. I also have to share my raw chocolate recipe! If you’re lucky!

Off to conquer the night,

Renee

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